DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE

   1. Film (1932). Paramount. Prod and dir Rouben Mamoulian, starring Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart. Screenplay Samuel Hoffenstein, Percy Heath, based on Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis STEVENSON. 98 mins, cut to 90 mins, cut to 81 mins. B/w.

   While Stevenson's suggestion is that civilization may be only skin-deep, his tale of a decent, prim society doctor, Dr Jekyll, who transforms himself with a new drug into the brutal libertine, Mr Hyde, does not exactly abandon the religious concept of original sin; it does, however, reconcile it with 19th-century scientific thought, calling on Darwin (humanity's animal heritage) and prefiguring Freud (the id sometimes overwhelming the ego). Silent film versions (made in 1908, 1910, 1912, 1913 and three in 1920) were usually taken from one of the several melodramatic stage productions rather than directly from the original novel, and tended to present Hyde (as in the 1920 version played by John Barrymore) as a caricature of evil - that is, as a victim of his own Original Sin.In Mamoulian's 1932 version, which remains the most interesting, Hyde's appearance is almost that of Neanderthal Man (APES AND CAVEMEN), and his joyfully ferocious behaviour results not from inherent evil but from uncontrollable primitive drives. The most compelling of these is sexual - this is one of the classic loci of the theme of SEX in sf - though as the film progresses it is accompanied by an increasing capacity for cruelty. All this comments, apparently deliberately, on the repressed society in which Jekyll has been reared. The film, atmospheric and convincing, is an acknowledged classic, especially famous for the heartbeats on the soundtrack and the convincing transformation scenes. When re-released after the Hollywood Production Code was established in 1934, it had 10 minutes cut (sexual censorship), seldom restored since.

   2. Film (1941). MGM. Dir Victor Fleming, starring Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman. Screenplay John Lee Mahin. 127 mins. B/w.

   Growing pressures of censorship took some of the sexual edge from this glossy remake and, although the film is still gripping - largely because of Bergman's appealing vulnerability as the tart - it seems bland after the raw energy of Mamoulian's version.3. Subsequent film versions - including The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1960; vt House of Fright US), which had a plain Jekyll turning into a handsome Hyde, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1967), a made-for-tv film, I, Monster (1970), Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), where Martine Beswick plays Hyde as a woman in a film seemingly designed for fetishists, The Man with Two Heads (1972; vt Dr Jekyll and Mr Blood), Dr Black and Mr Hyde (1975) and Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (1981; vt The Blood of Dr Jekyll), a particularly perverse version dir Walerian Borowczyk - have simply been variations of the formula, some more ingenious than others, but none with the impact of the 1932 production.

   PN/JB